The Lord has brought me here, and has said to me,
“I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy
that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”
– Girolamo Savonarola
THE MORNING AFTER my unplanned visit to the paintball camp I returned to the mansion and went immediately to the library. I sat down at the escritoire, thinking. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Professor Corbizzi already had a catalogue of his collection, and I was determined to search the library thoroughly before I started an inventory from scratch. There was no use asking Mrs. Stoppini-she avoided the room. Besides, she had asked me to do the inventory in the first place.
The absence of a computer or one of those old-style multi-drawer file-card systems like they used to have in public libraries was not encouraging. The filing cabinet yielded nothing but old household bills, tax statements, and other papers, and in the escritoire I found only an old pipe tobacco tin containing a broken pocket knife and a rosary with glass beads and a black wooden cross.
One of the bottom drawers of the escritoire jammed when I tried to close it. Wiggling as I pulled, I removed it and set it on the desk. On my hands and knees, I took a close look at the track. It was worn but seemed true. I checked the drawer’s corner joints. Sure enough, they were loose, a common problem with old furniture. It would take only a few minutes to fix.
I emptied the contents-a few loose papers and a package of envelopes-onto the desk beside the typewriter and turned the drawer upside down to examine it more closely. Something rattled, then two small brass keys plopped onto the escritoire. I set the drawer down, intending to repair it later, then looked around, my mind back to the quest for a catalogue. I could see nowhere such a thing might be kept-unless among the books themselves. Finding it would mean taking the books off the shelves and examining them-which Raphaella and I would be doing anyway as we worked on the inventory.
Then I remembered the alcove on the other side of the room, and the cupboard built into the bookshelves.
Quickly, I crossed the floor, the little brass keys in my hand. The volumes flung onto the floor by the professor during his last seconds on earth were now stacked on the table in the alcove. I stepped between the table and the shelves on the north wall. The closely fitted cupboard door had a round wooden pull-and below the pull, a brass cabinet lock.
One of the keys opened the lock. I found a stack of small leather-bound books that would have made my father exclaim “Aha!” as he waggled his eyebrows. He loved old books, and sometimes added them to his collection rather than put them up for sale. I transferred the pile onto the table behind me and opened one book at random. It was a Greek-Latin dictionary, published in London in 1763. Assuming the rest were as valuable-or the professor wouldn’t have kept them under lock and key-I made a mental note to tell Mrs. Stoppini she would need the services of a rare books expert at some point.
I lifted out a stack of bundled papers, each bunch secured with ribbons, like a parcel. On closer examination, the paper turned out to be vellum-finely polished animal skin. The manuscripts had been penned by different people, and none was in English. Conscious of their value, I replaced them carefully. As I slid them back into the cupboard, my fingernail caught on something. I moved the manuscripts to the table again.
There was a large round knot in the board that formed the right-hand wall of the cupboard. In an otherwise top-quality bookshelf, why use a flawed piece of wood? Any cabinetmaker knows that knots-especially a big one like this-can come loose and even fall out over time as the wood dries. More important, the old vellum could be snagged just as my finger had been, and damaged. A lapse in cabinetmaking quality like this didn’t make sense.
I ran my finger across the surface of the knot. It was loose. And it was coated with a waxy substance. I pressed it. As I withdrew my finger, the knot came with it. I probed the hole. I felt something. Metal. I pushed.
And heard a barely audible click.
Then nothing.
Taking a step back, I scanned the shelves and uprights. Everything appeared as it should be-except for a barely noticeable gap that outlined three shelves and their uprights to the right of the cupboard. The gap hadn’t been there moments before.
I gripped the edge of a shelf between my finger and thumb and pulled. Silently, a section of the shelf unit, books and all, moved toward me like a hinged door, and I found myself looking at another cupboard set into the wall behind the bookshelves, this one secured by a locked metal roll-up door like you’d find on an old writing desk.
And then I heard a shrill ring.
Like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the teacher’s purse, I jumped back and snatched a glance toward the library doors, even though I couldn’t see them from the alcove. The ring trilled again.
My cell.
It was a text message: conf din arr 6 k? rs
I sent back k and closed the phone.
I took a breath and reminded myself that I wasn’t snooping. Well, not technically. I wasn’t prying into the professor’s private life. I was doing what I had agreed to do-make an inventory of the library-wasn’t I? The alcove was part of the library, wasn’t it?
The second key fit the lock and the door rolled up and behind the cupboard smoothly and silently, revealing two wide, deep shelves. The cupboard was like a strongbox-two layers of metal with insulation between. On the bottom shelf lay a messy pile of papers on top of a file case. The sheaf of paper was as thick as a brick, typed, I was willing to bet, on the old Underwood. The title page bore the word “Fanatics” over “by Professor Eduardo Corbizzi.” I set it aside.
A wine-coloured book with Compendium Revelationem on the spine in cracked gilt lettering rested on the top shelf beside a small container of inlaid wood. I took up the book, surprised by its heavy weight, and laid it on the table. It smelled of old leather and dust and ancient paper. I flipped through. The language wasn’t English. The last page was stained, but the words “Hieronymvs” and “Ferrara” were clear. Closer to the bottom I made out “Firenze” and “MCDXCV,” then “Ser Francesco Bonaccorsi.”
I turned back to the cupboard and opened the small, finely made box, finding a crudely cast medal, green with age, resting in a silk bed. On one side a pigeon-like bird with rays emanating from its head hung suspended in the sky, at the edge of a cloud. A raised line bisected the medal, separating the strange bird from a hand emerging from a cloud, clutching a dagger, its tip pointing toward a collection of buildings. The flip side showed the profile of a man gripping a crucifix with both hands, staring the haloed Jesus in the face. The man, wearing a cape with a hood that covered his hair and ears, had a prominent hooked nose, and the look in his eyes as he glowered at Jesus was anything but reverent.
Worn, almost illegible block letters in a foreign language followed the outside edge of the medal. I turned it slowly in my hands, squinting at the writing-which, like the lines in the red leather book, appeared at first to be English but wasn’t. Small diamond shapes were visible between some of the words.
HIERONYMVS SA followed by something illegible, EER ORD FREVIRI, and unclear marks, then DOCTISSIMVS.
Turning the coin over I read,
GLADIVS DOMINI SUP TERRA CITO ET
VELOCITER SPIRITVS ONI SUP TERRA COPIOSE SUDAT
“Interesting,” I whispered. “ ‘Hieronymvs’ appears on both the medal and in the book.”
I replaced the medal and carefully fitted the lid, then turned to the last article in the cupboard. It was heavy, wrapped in a black velvet cloth so soft the bulky object it enclosed almost slipped out of my hands. I found myself cradling an ornately tooled cross at least sixty centimetres high and encrusted with jewels. The dusky gold seemed to glow from within. Never in my life had I held something so valuable and beautiful.
On closer inspection, one of the jewels turned out to be a dome of clear but imperfect glass held to the base with clips, like a gem in a ring. The glass seemed to cover something brownish black, a kind of disk with a hole in the middle, that had been set into the gold.
Professor Corbizzi must have been a religious man as well as a secretive one, I thought, pushing the thick manuscript into the file case. I wound the string around the paper button, then replaced each object where I had found it and rolled down the door. I locked the cupboard and swung the bookcase door into position, hearing the solid but faint click of the catch. I placed the knot back in its spot and locked the outside cupboard, then slipped the keys under the rosary in the tobacco tin I had found in the escritoire. Carrying the damaged drawer, I left the library with relief, sliding the door shut and thinking about the strange cupboard’s contents and wondering if Mrs. Stoppini knew about them.
I STOOD IN THE KITCHEN DOORWAY, the drawer in my hand, watching her crank the handle of a pasta-making machine. She hadn’t heard me come into the kitchen. Whatever contrast there was between the two of us, we both liked to cook. There she was, making fresh linguine noodles for her supper, which she would eat alone.
She was a strange woman, with her outdated clothing-which I had assumed was a mourning outfit but now wasn’t so sure about-her formal speaking style, her old-fashioned manners which didn’t quite succeed in glossing over a stern, unyielding personality. She was lost in concentration, humming a sad tune I didn’t recognize.
I cleared my throat, startling her.
“Sorry. I’m just going to reset this drawer and then head off home.”
She eyed the drawer, then looked at me.
“It sticks,” I explained. “I can fix it in no time.”
Her stare didn’t waver.
“It’s what I do,” I added lamely.
Brushing flour from her hands, she said, “That’s most kind of you, Mr. Havelock. Perhaps you’d care for a beverage before you leave.”
I didn’t, but it would have been rude to refuse. Besides, the thought of her drudging away at her pasta machine, alone in a huge house, got to me.
“That would be great,” I replied. “I’ll just slop a little glue on this. Won’t take ten minutes.”
An almost-smile moved those strange red lips. “Splendid. What would you like to drink?”
“A cappuccino would be good.”
She frowned as if I had tracked cow flop across her kitchen floor. “In civilized countries, cappuccino is never served after twelve o’clock.”
Well, pardon me, I thought. What a boor you must think me. Instead I said, “One of your delicious macchiatos?”
“Very well.”
When I returned from the shop, the sideboard had been cleared, the pasta hung on a drying rack, and the green light glowed on the espresso machine. Mrs. Stoppini drew a tiny cup of coffee, added a drop of frothed milk, and placed it on the table in front of me along with a half-dozen squares of dark chocolate on a china plate.
She sat down with a glass of red wine.
“Chianti?” I asked.
“Indeed.”
“I’m hoping Raphaella will be able to come tomorrow,” I told her.
“I shall look forward to it.”
“Um, Mrs. Stoppini, I want to ask you something.”
She put down her glass, her thick dark eyebrows lifting slightly. She fixed her fish-eyes on me expectantly, her bizarrely made-up lips in a straight line.
“I… I hope you won’t think I’m prying, or that I’m overstepping the terms of my contract…”
The eyebrows dropped into a frown.
“I’m aware that you made a big deal… er, point about confidentiality-”
“Excuse my interruption, Mr. Havelock, but what-?”
“But you stressed that you wanted a complete inventory.”
“Do feel free to speak, Mr. Havelock,” she said impatiently.
“Well, am I right in assuming the inventory is to include the little cupboard behind the secret door?”
“The… I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“Come with me,” I said.
Before she could object, I left the kitchen. When I pulled back the library doors she was right behind me. She stood rooted in the hallway, watching me like a puzzled crow, as if I was a demented stranger teetering on the edge of a fullblown fit. I got the keys from the escritoire, crossed the room, and stopped by the alcove.
“You can’t see it from there,” I said. “You’ll have to come in.”
“Very well. If you insist.”
She drew herself up and stepped in, like a non-swimmer testing the water.
“Farther,” I advised.
Mrs. Stoppini advanced stiffly, craning her neck.
I went through the elaborate process of releasing the lock. “Now watch,” I said, a little dramatically.
The section of bookcase swung smoothly open. Behind me I heard her catch her breath. I rolled up the secret inner door. I hadn’t thought her eyes could get any bigger or protrude any farther, but they did.
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed.
“Take a look at what I found in here,” I said, holding back my excitement.
Mrs. Stoppini had gone pale. She looked like she was about to dash off. “I think not, just at the moment,” she said uneasily. “Please add whatever it is to the inventory.”
“Well, the thing is, it looks like pretty valuable stuff. Maybe you should hang on to this.”
I tried to hand her the key. She shrank back, eyes bulging, as if the key carried a curse.
“No, no, Mr. Havelock, if you please!”
She fled the room as if it was on fire.
“HMM. FANATICS, EH? Catchy title. What’s the book about?”
“I don’t know. Someone with too much zeal and too little common sense, I suppose.”
“You didn’t read any of it.”
“No,” I replied sheepishly.
Only a few hours had passed since I discovered Professor Corbizzi’s secret hoard of mysteries. Raphaella and I were lounging in the living room of my house, lazy and sluggish after a big dinner with my parents, who had gone out to the bridge club.
“And you only took, quote, ‘a quick gander’ at that thing under the glass dome on the gold cross, and you can’t say what it was.”
“Right.”
“And the title of the big old leather book published around five hundred years ago was in a language kind of like English but not English.”
“Right again.”
“Which was sort of like the language on the medal, but you’re not sure.”
“Go to the head of the class.”
“And the word ‘Hieronymvs’ appears on both the book and the medal, but you don’t know what it means.”
I nodded.
“Remind me never to hire you as a detective,” Raphaella said, lying back lazily with her head propped on the arm of the sofa and her feet in my lap.
“I detected all kinds of stuff. I detected so many things that I almost fainted from detection exhaustion.”
She smirked. “Poor boy. But you didn’t delve, did you?”
“I already told you. The place gives me the shivers. And there’s more.”
Raphaella sat up. “I knew it.”
Beginning slowly so as not to leave out any details-I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to-I told her the dream I had had during the thunderstorm at the Corbizzi place. The dark chamber, the black rat, the terrifying silent men at the table, the horrific torture of the man whose face I couldn’t make out in the gloom, his heart-ripping shrieks. Her face blanched when I described how they let him drop from the ceiling and how his shoulders made that sickening crack when they were dislocated.
Raphaella had an interesting theory about dreams. She believed that most were a sort of inner conversation in sounds and images and actions. You were telling yourself something, one part of the mind explaining itself to another, without words. If you paid attention to your dream, analyzed it without expecting it to be logical or “realistic,” you could eventually understand what it was about.
Both of us also believed that some dreams weren’t like these inner conversations. They originated outside the dreamer and came from another realm, as if two different realities intersected momentarily, like the past briefly overlapping the present. When Raphaella had one of her premonitions, she believed they came from outside her in the same way. We knew without saying anything that the dream I had described was this second kind.
“Wow,” she said when I had finished my story. “Hmm.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“The bedroom was-”
“Directly above the library alcove.”
THAT NIGHT MY ROOM was like a sauna but with nicer furniture. I had both windows open but not even a breath of air stirred the branches of the maples along the street. I read for a while, sitting up in bed, legs splayed. Eventually I gave in and threw down my novel. I cast my eye to the balcony, thinking.
Why not? I asked myself. I had slept out there before on nights like this. It wasn’t very comfortable but it was a few degrees cooler. I swung my feet to the floor just as a car cruised slowly down Brant Street, its tuned exhausts thundering in the spaces between window-rattling thumps of a sub-woofer. I fell back onto the mattress and rolled over, giving in to a few hours of tossing and turning.
Sometime during the night, a cool draft made sleep possible and I drifted off. I heard rusted door hinges groan in protest, the tread of heavy boots echoing off stone walls. I saw the candle on the trestle table wavering in the draft, dimly outlining the six characters in the grim drama I had witnessed in my first nightmare-the hooded men, the two jailers, the torture victim. A seventh man, this one wearing a long coat and a shapeless cap, tentatively entered the chamber, pushed the door closed, and bowed to the figures seated behind the table. He turned toward the collapsed human form on the floor.
The prisoner’s anguished cries had ebbed to continuous sobbing. The newcomer knelt next to him, pitilessly gripped his mangled upper arm, made a small adjustment, locked his elbows, and then, deaf to the shrieks of the prisoner, threw the weight of his body behind the thrust, relocating the shoulder. He rolled the victim over and repeated the gruesome procedure on the opposite shoulder, drawing more howls of torment. Rising, he brushed dust off his knees and hands, then turned on his heel and left the cell.
The jailers moved in and trussed up the prisoner the same way they had before. The pulley began its grisly song, halting after the prisoner’s bare feet had cleared the floor. One of the jailers left the chamber, returning immediately with a smoking bucket of red-hot coals, which he placed under the victim’s filthy, dangling feet. He knelt, took hold of the prisoner’s legs, and nodded to his partner, who gripped the rope and leaned backwards against the prisoner’s weight. Gradually, he eased off on the rope. The hanging man slowly descended. His feet went down into the bucket. Skin and fat sizzled and smoked.
The pitiful screams and wails, the squeak of the pulley, the thrum of the rope abruptly halting the body’s fall, the sickening crack of the dislocating of shoulder joints-all amid the nauseous stench of burned flesh-mingled to form a new definition of hell.
DISEMBODIED SCREECHES coming from somewhere above drew me away from my nightmare. I lay in my bed, wincing with each sharp cry. I stared at the ceiling, focused on the cracks in the plaster, willing myself to take hold of reality.
I looked out the window into a blue sky. Seagulls wheeled past, shrieking.
The morning sunlight washed away some of the dread in the wake of the dream. Think about it, I told myself. Don’t run away from it this time. But what could I conclude-besides that I had seen a man tortured a second time, and that the dream told me, the way dreams do, it was the same man? I had not seen his face, but I knew. Who was he? Who were the shadowed men behind the table presiding over the atrocity? Who were the jailers who had administered the torture with the detachment of clerks stocking grocery shelves? I had no answers.
All right, then. If not who, when and where? There were no clues as to location other than the stone construction of the damp cell. There was the smoky candle, the table’s rough-hewn planks, the men’s clothing, barely discernible in the three-quarter darkness. I recalled images of the men. Leather jerkins on the jailers, a long coat and soft hat on the man who reset the victim’s shoulders, hooded robes on the silent three. Whatever I had seen, it had happened long ago.
And there was the method of torture.
It was a place to start.
But did I want to start? If I began to investigate the dream, where would it lead? Nowhere good, I was sure. But I was-morbidly, it was true-curious. I felt like a kid sticking his head into a darkened cave just to see how big the dragon is.
MY STOMACH, still knotted by the nightmare, rebelled at the idea of breakfast, but I forced down a piece of toast and took a second cup of tea to my room and powered up my laptop. Before long my tour of online encyclopedias led me into a house of horrors offering lots of gruesomely illustrated techniques human beings have used over the centuries to inflict degradation and pain on each other.
There seemed to be two main reasons for torture-to force a confession or to extract information. “I confess to being a witch-or unbeliever, or terrorist, or heretic” was almost always followed with “Tell us the names of other witches-or unbelievers, or terrorists, or heretics.” Politics, war, and religion were the main theatres of torture. I had assumed that torture was a thing of the past, but it was still performed. Everywhere. And, I was shocked to learn, by everyone. Even the good guys. I didn’t want to think about where the churches and prisons and army camps recruited their torturers.
There was a grimly realistic pencil drawing of the grisly technique I had seen in my dream. It was called the strappado-Italian for “tear” or “rip.” The picture showed a woman accused of witchcraft hanging from the ceiling like a damaged moth, her arms up and behind, her feet weighed down by a heavy chain wrapped around her ankles. The strappado had been busy for centuries-in the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the Puritan Salem witch trials, the North Vietnamese prison camps in the 1970s, and today in the hunt for terrorists. The references said that the strappado was almost as “effective” as waterboarding, where the victim is tied to an inclined plank, head down, and water is poured into his mouth and nostrils, making him think he is drowning.
I logged off in disgust before I lost what faith in humanity I had left, and called Raphaella. Her voice was like spring water on a dry throat.
“I’ll pick you up in five,” I said. “Bring a smile with you.”
WHEN I TURNED THE CORNER of her street, Raphaella was standing on the curb outside her house. Dressed in a mauve T-shirt and sky blue jeans, she was a bright splash of colour in a depressing morning. She climbed into the van and dumped her backpack on the floor. As I pulled away, I felt her eyes on me.
“No good-morning kiss today?” I asked.
“What’s happened?” was her reply. “You’re giving off vibes like a radar tower.”
“I’m fine. Hey, you look great.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Mrs. Indeed will be impressed.”
She continued to fix me in her gaze. “You’ve had another dream,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she added, as if we had come to some kind of decision. “Anything different this time?”
“A few more details. About the torture.”
“Let’s stop here for a bit.”
I slipped the van into one of the shaded parking spaces near the Champlain monument in the park. We got out and strolled to a bench on a grassy patch by the lake. Across the water to the north, Wicklow Point, densely cloaked in maples and willows, hooked into the bay like a claw.
I told Raphaella the dream and described the research I had done.
“So what do we know?” she began. “To me, the most significant fact is that you can’t see anyone’s face clearly, especially the four most important characters in the story.”
“The prisoner and the three people supervising the torture.”
“Men,” Raphaella corrected. “They’re men. Women don’t torture.”
I nodded. “I think the victim’s male, too, judging by his voice. And the clues point to the past. The strappado is still used, but the candle and the clothing go back centuries. Besides, in a dream you just know things, without needing a reason.”
“Strappado. Sounds Italian. That’s what this kind of torture is called?”
“Right. It means ripping and tearing-in this case, the shoulders.”
“Since nobody says anything, we can’t figure out the reason for the torture,” Raphaella went on.
“Wait! The victim does say something, but it’s like words all mixed up with cries and groans. Not in English, though. And it sounds like…” I jumped to my feet. “A prayer! I think he was praying.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Raphaella said. “But that’s good. It’s not much, but every clue helps.”
I sat down again, shaken. “When I feel ready, I’ll go over the nightmare again. Maybe a few details will come to the surface, but I’m pretty sure there’s much more to remember.”
Raphaella put her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled of flowers and soap-fresh, like spring. There was a time I would have rejected the conversation we were having. What’s around us, I would have argued-the lake, the sky, those kids on the playground over there-is real. Dreams aren’t. Now I knew different.
“I guess I’ll just have to wait,” I said, “for the third dream.”
“You think you’ll have another?”
“I know I will.”
MRS. STOPPINI HAD TEA for three laid out on the kitchen table when Raphaella and I appeared at the back door of the Corbizzi mansion. Stiff and stern, she ushered us inside.
“Good morning, Mr. Havelock,” she intoned, then turned to Raphaella. “And you must be Miss Skye. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.” She held out a bony hand.
“Hi,” Raphaella replied, throwing me a glance that said “I see what you mean.”
“You’ll take tea,” asserted Mrs. Stoppini, showing us to the table with a turn of her wrist.
We chit-chatted about the weather-the kind of aimless small talk that drove me nuts-then our hostess got down to business. She had begun to impress on Raphaella the need for discretion and confidentiality when I cut in and excused myself.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you two to discuss details. I need to see about something in the shop.”
I went out the door before anyone could object.
In the workshop I turned on the lights and fan, then slipped into my apron. The assembled mantel lay on the workbench, bristling with clamps, pale under the lights. I freed it and carried it to the wall, where I stood it beside the blistered and scorched remains of the original. Stepping back a few paces, I ran my eye over every detail, comparing them. Satisfied, I lifted the new one to a dust-free bench and cleaned it with rags lightly sprinkled with solvent, careful to remove every speck of sawdust. Then I took it to the spray booth and spent twenty minutes or so mixing stains to match the old mantel’s red mahogany finish as closely as possible. After trading the apron for a set of coveralls, a hat, gloves, a mask, and goggles, I turned on the sprayer and began to apply the finish.
I returned to the house to find that the two women-whom I wouldn’t have been surprised to see facing off like a couple legionaries-were still at the table, their cups empty, their plates sprinkled with crumbs, chatting almost informally about MOO. Raphaella tossed me a “get me out of here!” look.
“That’s that done,” I said, closing the door behind me.
Raphaella got to her feet. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs. Stoppini. I suppose Garnet and I should be getting to work.”
ALTHOUGH SHE HAD HIDDEN it well during our tea, Raphaella was nervous about the library, and as we walked down the corridor to the east wing, her tension grew. When I rolled the doors aside and stepped into the room, which was bright with morning light, she stopped.
“I see what you meant,” she murmured. “Something happened here all right.”
“Professor Corbizzi died.”
“Something more. Much more. Something bad.”
“Like the churchyard on the 3rd Concession?”
On the way home from a delivery to the city one night more than a year before, I had run smack into the worst snowstorm to hit the county in ten years. Barely escaping a huge pileup of cars, buses, and tractor-trailers near Barrie, I had steered off the big highway and taken the 3rd Concession. My luck held for a while, but the darkness and thick, whirling snow reduced visibility to zero and I skidded off the road, smashing into something I couldn’t even see. Luckily-I thought at the time-the pioneer church called African Methodist, unused for years, was close by. I slogged through blinding snow and howling wind to take shelter inside. I passed a long, cold, and scary night, haunted by dreams and disembodied voices.
About three months later, Raphaella and I passed the church on our way to the mobile home park where I was about to take up a part-time job as caretaker. We stopped to look around. In the quiet sunlit churchyard Raphaella had immediately sensed something evil.
“The feeling’s just as powerful, but different,” Raphaella replied now. “I’m not being clear, am I?”
“You don’t have to be. I’ve felt it since the beginning. I hoped it would disappear once the damage from the fire was repaired and the smoke odour removed.”
Raphaella walked slowly along the south wall, avoiding the alcove, the way I had done on my first exploration of the library. Her fingertips brushed the books as she passed.
“What a collection,” she said, awed by the sheer number of hardcover volumes. “Show me the secret cupboard.”
I fetched the keys from the desk and went through the unlocking ritual.
“It’s like an Alexandre Dumas novel, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“I’ve never read a Dumas novel. And why are you whispering?”
She stood behind me as I rolled up the screen, revealing the interior of the hidden cupboard.
“Hmm.”
Making a dramatic little show, I lifted the items from the shelves to the table one at a time, then stood back. “Open the big one last.”
Raphaella quickly inspected the typed sheets, the big leather-bound volume, the wooden box with the inlaid crucifix design. “Did you record this inscription?” she asked, scrutinizing the medal.
“Not yet.”
She put down the medal and removed the velvet cloth from the cross. “Look at this!” she whispered in awe, standing it on the table. The light pouring through the library windows sparkled in the gemwork and set the carved gold aglow, making it seem alive. The cross stood tall and solid, a work of art that seemed anything but holy.
Raphaella picked it up and tilted it this way and that. “It’s kind of sinister, isn’t it?” she mused. “It’s supposed to inspire reverence, but it’s a little… menacing. And this is the part you told me about,” she added, peering into the blown-glass globe.
I went over to the desk and brought back the magnifying glass. She took it from me and squinted through it.
“The glass is wavy and it has tiny bubbles in it. This thing inside, I can’t tell what it is. It’s shaped like a big washer, with a little projection out each side. Strange.”
“I wish that was the only odd thing around here.”
THAT AFTERNOON, with the secret objects locked away and the weight of the room’s disapproval on our shoulders, Raphaella and I discussed the most efficient way to inventory the library. She had established a base at the trestle table nearest the window, setting up her laptop and pulling from her bottomless backpack a couple of notebooks, some pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and a cellphone with a camera, as well as Internet and email capability and a digital music player. Then she quickly created a database on the computer, ready and waiting for us to fill it with information.
“And you accuse me of slipping into techno-mode once in a while,” I said, pointing to the cell.
“I’m willing to make an occasional concession,” she said, picking up the shiny black button-covered device, which the manufacturer called a PIE-a personal information exchanger. “They come in crabapple, lemon, strawberry, and licorice. This one’s licorice.”
“In keeping with the food metaphor.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, let’s start by trying to discover if the professor organized this gigantic book collection according to a system,” I proposed.
“Good idea. I’ll start with these books behind me and go that way,” she replied, pointing to the escritoire.
We began a slow tour of the shelves, moving in opposite directions.
“The most obvious thing is that there are no numbers or letters on the spines, unlike a public library,” I pointed out.
“Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress notations.”
“And no coloured dots glued on.”
“And the shelves aren’t labelled.”
We continued our slow progress.
“Aha!” I crowed.
“I know, the books are arranged by the author’s last name.”
“And,” I added, brushing my fingertips along the books on a bottom shelf, continuing on to the top shelf of the next unit, “they’re organized by topic, if that’s the right word.”
“I’m in a reference section,” Raphaella said. She had reached the wall behind the escritoire.
“I’ve got philosophy here. Somebody named Aquinas. Plato. More Plato.”
“Wait! I’ve got an idea.”
Raphaella went over and rummaged around in her backpack. “Just what we need-removable labels,” she said, holding up a small box.
“Okay. I’d say what we should do now is find the professor’s starting point. The reference section behind the escritoire is probably it. Things should be easy for you now.”
“Wait a second,” Raphaella protested. “What do you mean, easy for me?”
I sat down at the escritoire and wound a piece of paper into the Underwood. “I didn’t bring my laptop today, so I’ll start a list of the non-book stuff, beginning with this ancient writing machine,” I replied, “and you can transfer it to your database later.” I pushed hard on the round black keys, each with a gold letter printed on it. A satisfying clack accompanied every stroke.
We worked for over an hour. Raphaella was humming along with the show tunes serenading her through the ear buds of the PIE. I made a list of the contents of the escritoire and filing cabinet, then noted the furniture and carpets, with a brief description of each item. I left the library to check on the mantel. The deep red finish was drying nicely. When I returned, Raphaella was standing on a three-step riser, sticking a label on the top edge of a bookshelf unit by the window. Bits of yellow, pink, and blue paper adorned the shelves all over the room.
“Good. You’re back. Now, take a seat.”
I flopped into a leather chair as Raphaella perched on the edge of her working table. Pointing with a pencil, she began.
“We already know the books are arranged by author surname. They are grouped by subject-history, art, et cetera-but that’s still too cumbersome when there are so many books. All Mrs. Stoppini needs is an inventory, right? And a way to find a certain book, if necessary. So I’ve come up with a plan. Each of the bookshelf units will be called a column. Starting to the right of the doors over there we have column one. Beside it is-”
“Column fourteen.”
“What? Col-?”
“I thought it might be more interesting if we numbered the columns randomly.”
“Garnet, don’t be immature.”
“But being immature is part of my boyish charm.”
“You don’t have any charm, boyish or otherwise. May I continue?”
“Indeed.”
Raphaella flashed a smile. “To the right of column one is?”
“Two?”
“Excellent. Two. And so on, moving clockwise around the room till we come to the doors again. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Each shelf in a column is called a row,” she went on, “and each row is numbered, starting from the top. Each book in each shelf or row is called a slot.”
“Brilliant. Your talents are wasted in a health food store.”
“Garnet.”
“No wonder the Orillia Theatre Group always chooses you to stage-manage their productions.”
“Test time. Roman numeral V, baby Roman numeral x, arabic numeral 12 is?”
“Column five, row ten, slot twelve,” I answered.
“Which is-” Raphaella slipped off the table and crossed the room to the shelves beside the newly painted wall above the fireplace and placed her index finger on the spine of a book-“Fresco Techniques of the Italian Renaissance.”
“I’ve been meaning to read that, but I never seem to find the time.”
Raphaella ignored my remark. “When I enter the titles in the database, every book in this room will be identified and easy to find. For the books that will be listed in more detail-the ones in the alcove-we can put in the particulars afterward.”
“It’s clever, astute, and brainy,” I said. “Really.”
Raphaella gave a mock bow, then walked back to her table and picked up her backpack. She consulted her wristwatch.
“I’m glad you’re pleased. Now you can take me home.”
AFTER SAYING GOODBYE to Mrs. Stoppini I locked up the shop, then Raphaella and I drove into town. I dropped her at her mother’s store on Peter Street, turned around, and headed for the fresh produce market out by the highway. It was my turn to cook dinner.
When I approached our back door with my groceries, I heard loud voices coming from Mom’s office. Angry voices. At first I thought it must be a radio or the TV, but I soon realized it was my mother and father, hammering away at each other in a way I’d never experienced in my life.
I slipped through the kitchen door and quietly placed my grocery bags on the table. I couldn’t believe my ears. My parents had never fought like that. They argued once in a while, and not always good-naturedly. They grew impatient with each other-or with me-now and again. But the noises coming out of the next room were shocking.
“No, no, and no again!”
“Gareth, you’re shouting. Control yourself, for heaven’s sake. I’m trying to explain-”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Dad insisted.
“The war is in the south. I’ll be in the western part of the country, in Herat.”
“The war is all over the place! You know that. What’s-?”
“Herat is peaceful, I’m telling you!”
“Are you listening to yourself? You know that country! It’s a hellhole of macho tribesmen trying to kill each other and every foreigner they see. Not to mention NATO air strikes.”
“I’m telling you I’ll be safe. I go in, do the research, and leave.”
“You of all people ought to know what nonsense you’re spouting. You’re being ridiculous. Look at that Iranian-Canadian journalist a few years ago. She was beaten to death! By the police!”
“That was in Iran.”
“Which is on the western border of Afghanistan. And Afghanistan is even more dangerous! The place is falling apart! And with their attitude toward women-let alone a woman reporter, a foreign woman reporter asking impertinent questions! Look, Annie,” my father said, forcing himself to calm down, “I’ve never interfered with your career before, even when you went to…” His voice hardened as it quieted. “Not this time, Annie. No. When I think of what happened in East Timor… Garnet and I-”
Standing there at the edge of the volcano, I quickly pieced together what was happening. My mother had been offered an assignment. Investigative journalism was her strength and-I sometimes thought-the most important thing in her life. In Afghanistan, this time. In the middle of a vicious civil war. And she wanted to accept the job. I knew her. She would sneak into the country if she had to-anything to get the story. Whatever the story was. She thrived on the adventure and, although she’d never admit it, the danger. And she was ambitious. Already well known, she was always afraid that she’d be pushed to the sidelines if she didn’t stay in the game.
“Don’t bring Garnet into this!” she yelled. “It has nothing-”
“Garnet’s already in it,” I said, stepping into the room.
My parents fell silent. My father, his face red with anger, and my mother, eyes flashing, features twisted with frustration-they seemed like total strangers, as if, while I was away, two impostors had invaded our home.
“Why should you leave me out of it?” I demanded.
“Because this is my decision,” she said quietly but firmly.
“Yeah, I guess it is, Mom. I guess you’re the only one who matters.”
“Garnet,” my father said.
There was a sticky silence in the room.
I didn’t mean that, I wanted to tell her. But I had meant it.
My father’s colour was returning to normal. My mother’s face softened a little. My mind was racing. How could I convince her to change her mind? Bullying her wouldn’t work. My father had already proved that.
“Can we discuss this calmly?” I asked.
“Not if-”
“Annie, please let him talk,” Dad said, throwing himself into a chair.
My mother tilted her head a little, a gesture of agreement.
“I… I have an idea,” I began, my thoughts forming quickly. “A sort of compromise.”
My father bristled. There was not going to be a compromise as far as he was concerned. I held up my hand. “Just let me say something, Dad.”
He settled back. My mother sat down slowly at her desk.
“Okay. Now, Mom, if you insist on going, I’d like to come with you. No, really,” I added, cutting her off again. “Hear me out. I’d be a help. I could carry your equipment. More important, we know that conservative Muslim men over there, not to mention the Islamists, insist that women should never go out in public unless they’re accompanied by a man-”
Mom’s face coloured with impatience.
“Their husband, or elder brother, or eldest son. I’m your son, right? So you see, I could go along. I’d always be with you, and you’d be… well, legal or whatever the word is. Besides, I’ve never had much chance to travel, so-”
My mother snapped, “It’s out of the question!”
“But why?”
“Because it isn’t-”
And she stopped.
“Safe?” my father said quietly, not so much as a hint of triumph in his voice.
The room went still again. After a moment, Mom got up and left the office. My father turned to look as the front door closed quietly.
AS IF THE ATMOSPHERE in the sky above the roof was tuned to the squally mood of the Havelock household, thunderstorms began to hit the town early in the evening and rolled overhead like a succession of bowling balls for most of the night.
From my balcony, where I had retreated with a book right after supper, I watched the first storm cell gathering. Dark clouds poured from the sky and a cool wind drove the daylight into hiding. I turned pages, half-concentrating, for as long as I could in the failing light, then gave up and dragged my chair back into my room just as the thunder announced itself. I read in bed for a while, then turned in for the night.
As always, the dream came indirectly, padding into my sleep like a predatory cat, taking shape as if emerging from a dark mist. In the background, thunderclaps and rapid strobelike flashes of lightning ebbed away, revealing the now familiar prison cell shrouded in darkness barely diluted by points of yellow light. There were two candles on the long table this time. The only sounds were the gasps of the prisoner and the occasional scrape of a leather sandal on the stone floor.
The victim, his back twisted under his filthy shift, his shoulders misshapen, knelt on the floor before the table, forehead on the stone, mumbling repeatedly, “De profundis clamavi ad te domine, domine esuadi vocem meam.”
Partially within the glow cast by the candles, their faces in the shadow of their hoods, the three men were at their places behind the table. The one in the centre was shorter than the other two, his shoulders broader, and he was in command. He said something calmly, as if passing the time of day with his colleagues, and the jailers approached the victim. One held the leather thongs for the prisoner’s wrists, the other clutched the end of the hoisting rope. Still on his knees, the prisoner placed his elbows on the table’s edge, grunting with the pain, his hands together as in prayer.
“Credo in unum deum…”
The man at the table spoke again. The prisoner looked up, and as he did the candlelight fell upon his face, revealing sunken cheeks, thick lips, and a large hooked nose. There was no mistaking his identity.
He was the man on the medal hidden in Professor Corbizzi’s secret cupboard.
RAIN BUCKETED DOWN for half the night, then slackened as the storm rampaged off to the east and beyond the lake. When morning light rose in my window I was able to sleep.
But not for long. Mom called me for breakfast at the usual time. When I slouched into the kitchen, yawning and knuckling sleep from my eyes, I found my parents at the table, their faces blank and cold. I poured a coffee and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster.
The only sounds in the room were the clink of cutlery on a plate or a jam pot and me slurping down hot coffee to kick-start my brain. Mom had the local paper open to the city page. I laid my hand on her shoulder and leaned over to scan the dramatic headline shouting that the city’s third drowning victim had been found at the north end of Cumberland Beach, near Greyshott Drive. The unidentified man was wearing sporting gear, the article said, and was unknown to locals.
“Any chance you’ll be assigned to cover that?” I asked, just to make conversation.
Mom shook her head. She didn’t do accidents. She did wars, conspiracies, naughty politicians. I took my toast to the table, sat, and spooned a dollop of Dad’s homemade strawberry jam onto my barely singed bread.
“Um,” I began, hoping to break the ice that held my parents in its grip, “do either of you know anything about Roman numerals?”
“Does,” Mom said.
“Pardon?”
“It’s ‘Does either of you know.’ ”
“Oh, sorry. Okay, I tries again. Does youse guys can reads Roman numerals any good?”
My father’s eyes twinkled. “Garnet, please doesn’t be sarcastic. We all gots to talk good, or people will think we ain’t been edjimicated.”
Mom let out a theatrical sigh. “I’m living with a couple of boors. Who always gang up on me.”
“I can,” Dad said. “Read Roman numerals, that is.”
“Good. I know numbers one, five, and ten, but that’s all. What’s MCDXCV?”
“Let’s see…” he mused, scrutinizing the ceiling. “It’s a lot.”
“It’s 1495,” Mom cut in.
“Exactly what I was going to say,” Dad added, nodding wisely.
“And one more question-Was the Italian language in 1495 pretty much the same as now?”
It was my mother who replied. “Back then, Italy wasn’t a unified nation as it is today. It was a group of small republics, duchies, and kingdoms-Venice, Milan, Naples, for example. And each area had its own dialect. Books were usually written in Latin, the language of those your father would call edjimicated. It was sort of the universal language of Europe.”
“And of the Roman Catholic Church,” Dad put in. “Which, at that time, was the Church.”
I had a thought. “So prayers would be said in Latin.”
Both of them nodded at once. “The mass was said in Latin, too,” Dad said.
My sleep-deprived brain was suddenly energized. I felt my excitement growing, but I did my best to sound casual.
“If I gave you a few sentences in Latin, could you translate them?”
Dad shook his head.
Mom replied, “No, but we know someone who could.”
Dad gave a look of mock confusion. “We does?”
BEFORE I LEFT for the estate and the thousands of books waiting to be catalogued I phoned Raphaella, but the call went immediately to her voicemail. I wanted to let her know that I had discovered the identity of the torture victim in my dream. “I’m pursuing a lead,” I said, “just like a detective. It has to do with language,” I added mysteriously.
I disconnected and sat down to compose a letter to Marshall Northrop, my parents’ friend in the classical studies department at York University. Mom had called him after breakfast and left a message asking for help and telling him I’d be in contact.
I had noted the title of Professor Corbizzi’s antique book on my laptop, along with the inscription on the medal, so it was a simple matter to paste the information into a letter. I explained to the prof that the medal’s words were very hard to read, but I had done my best to copy them accurately. Last, I asked him to call my cell at his convenience because there were some oral expressions I wanted to ask him to translate. I didn’t say that the words had been uttered by a man who was being tortured. In a jail cell somewhere back in history. In a dream.
I sent off the email, then walked down Matchedash Street to Mississauga and over to the Half Moon Cafe. Nodding to Marco, I took a table near the bar. The mid-morning crowd was thin, the cafe fairly quiet, except for a table of women who were chirping away enthusiastically, coloured shopping bags at their feet and crumb-sprinkled plates next to their empty cups and mugs. Beside a trio of men in suits, their table strewn with pamphlets and papers, Evvie McFadden was reading a book, on her break, I guessed, from the Magus Bookstore a few doors down. I waved when she raised her head. I had known Evvie since grade one, when I had been in love with her for a week or so.
Marco appeared with my latte and two tiny pastries, each dusted with powdered sugar and topped with a dab of chocolate.
“How did you know what I was going to order?”
The parentheses appeared briefly at the corners of his smile. “I took a wild guess,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag.
“Thanks, Marco.” I nodded toward the back. “Who are the suits? I don’t recognize any of them.”
“Dunno. They’re with Geneva Park, they said. Some conference or other.”
“I think I heard about that. Raphaella mentioned her production might get to perform out there. By the way, thanks for connecting me with Mrs. Stoppini.”
Marco waved his hand as if swatting a fly. “Don’t mention it. Everything workin’ out okay?”
“Couldn’t be better. I have the shop set up and operational.” I kept in mind my promise to Mrs. Stoppini not to disclose any details about my contract and didn’t say anymore.
“Great,” he replied.
“Marco, you said the professor was a distant cousin. Can you tell me anything about him?”
Marco settled back in his chair and rested an ankle on the opposite knee. “When I asked around the clan for his phone number I ran into a few road blocks. Nobody had much to say about him, which is rare in our family, where everybody butts into everybody else’s business, and where a dinner party is like a football match with everybody talking at once. But my aunt Isabella, she was married to… well, never mind the details. Anyways, she seemed to know a lot about the prof and was happy to talk to me.”
I sipped my latte and waited. Marco’s pause was my cue to prompt him for details. He loved to gossip, and he passed on information with a storyteller’s gift for drama and a comedian’s sense of timing. I popped one of the pastries into my mouth, chewed, swallowed, and raised my eyebrows to encourage him.
“See,” he went on, “our family has two lines, the Bianchis and the Corbizzis. How they mingled up with each other I got no idea. Nobody seems to know when it happened. Prob’ly a love affair somewhere along the road. Who can say? The Bianchis were Calabrian farmers, dirt poor and rough around the edges. The Corbizzis were Florentine merchants, minor nobility-they think they still are-and naturally they’re snobs. Look down on the Bianchis like a queen looks at the maid who cleans her bathroom. During World War II the Corbizzis sided with the Fascists. But Aunt Isabella says Eduardo Corbizzi-that’s the prof-wasn’t like the rest of them. He broke from his clan. He also refused the family money, struck off on his own, got an education, and became a scholar. Then he left Italy-a mortal sin among the Corbizzis. He was a real radical. Quit the Church at fifteen, didn’t believe in marriage. That’s what Isabella said.”
I thought about what Marco had told me. Whatever embellishments he or his aunt might have added, it fit with the little I had learned from Mrs. Stoppini. It explained her relationship with the prof, for one thing. She and the prof had been a couple but had never married in a church or at city hall. The prof was estranged from his family, a recluse, a man who held unusual opinions. Mrs. Stoppini had hinted as much when she explained that he hadn’t fit in very well at the University of Toronto. She had also indicated that he had become obsessed with his work toward the end of his life.
“Interesting guy,” I commented.
Marco leaned forward, elbows on the table, and dropped his voice. “Aunt Isabella said the prof was into some pretty weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Something to do with religion. She wouldn’t go into detail. I don’t know-maybe she was exaggerating. She’s a Bianchi, after all. Thinks the Corbizzis haven’t noticed that the world has changed. Funny thing is, from what she said, the prof prob’ly would’ve agreed with her.”
“So, Marco,” I said mischievously, “you’re a Grenoble, not a Corbizzi or a Bianchi. How did that happen?”
He got up and waved his hand. “Don’t ask.”
WHEN I GOT TO WICKLOW POINT the estate gate was blocked by a panel van with BRADLEY SUMMERHILL & SON, AUCTIONEERS painted on the side. Brad Summerhill, the son, was heaving his bulk from the driver’s seat. I pulled my motorcycle around the van and activated the remote.
“Follow me,” I said, and steered through the opening gate.
Brad backed the van up to the coach house door. I helped him lug the table into the shop.
Brad handed me a clipboard. “Sign here,” he said in his usual barely civilized manner.
I initialled the hand-printed form and passed the clipboard back.
“Your father was lucky,” Brad remarked.
“Oh?”
“He should never have gotten the table so cheap.”
Brad always seemed as if he’d sucked half a dozen lemons before he began his day.
“He bought it at auction, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Your auction.”
“So?”
“So how does an auction work? Remind me.”
“Forget it,” Brad growled. He squeezed himself behind the wheel and drove off.
“YOU’LL TAKE SOME refreshment before you begin your work,” Mrs. Stoppini informed me.
“Love to.”
“Tea?”
“I guess it’s too late for a cappuccino,” I said, “even for an uncivilized guy like me.”
Mrs. Stoppini checked the kitchen clock. “Most assuredly not.”
She went to the coffee machine and began to froth the milk. Over her shoulder and in a voice that suggested a major crime had occurred, she protested, “Your friend left without saying hello.”
“Brad was delivering a table my father bought. It needs to be refinished. Brad was in a hurry. He’s not a friend, really. More of a business, er…”
“Associate?”
“Right. More that than friend. He’s a little abrupt at times.”
“Then he has missed out on a homemade brioche.”
“Serves him right.”
Mrs. Stoppini made the espresso in a wide cup, then poured the foamy milk on top and set the cup on the table.
“May I enquire how your work is progressing?” she asked, sitting down and pushing the plate of pastries toward me.
“Well,” I said after swallowing a piece of bread roll as light as a fairy’s wing, “as you know, the repairs, the painting, and the mantel are finished. I’ve made an inventory of the furniture and everything else that isn’t a book, including the items in the, er… well, as I said, everything. Raphaella has worked out an efficient way of cataloguing the books. Which reminds me, I’ll need to know which ones you want noted in detail.”
“There are a number of volumes that he valued more than the others. They are all to be found in the alcove,” Mrs. Stoppini replied.
I should have known. “Okay” was all I said.
“Splendid progress, Mr. Havelock.”
“I have work to do in the shop this morning-the table I mentioned-then I’ll put in a few hours with the books.”
“Excellent. And I do think your young lady will prove to be an asset.”
I left the house smiling, picturing the look on Raphaella’s face when I informed her that she was not only a young lady but an asset.
Nourished by the cappuccino and brioches, I crossed the yard to the shop and began to inspect the table-a plain, functional piece of pine furniture, still sound but showing its age through scratches, dents, flaking paint, cigarette burns, and one wobbly leg. Dad wanted it refinished as original, which meant seeing to the leg and then stripping off the old finish and sanding the table before repainting it.
I set to work, and after a few hours the piece stood clean and ready for sanding. I hung up my apron, washed my hands, and went to the house. I wanted to acquaint myself with the books in the alcove before Raphaella and I began to catalogue them in detail. On the day we had worked out the professor’s method of organizing his collection and Raphaella had stuck her labels on the “columns,” we had avoided that part of the room.
I entered the library and shut the doors behind me. I felt as if I had closed myself off from the world. Since the first day I had come through those pocket doors with their lion’s-head knobs the alcove had seemed like a sinister space all its own, a special niche that was physically part of the larger room but at the same time a separate area. Most of the books scattered across the hardwood and rugs had been found in or around the alcove, and the table there had been knocked over, as if the professor’s final struggle had begun there. But it was more than that. The room’s menacing atmosphere intensified as I neared the alcove. The occasional whiff of smoke I often detected in the library was stronger there. My discovery of the keys and the secret cupboard with its weird contents seemed to intensify the mystery and malevolence.
Once again I wondered if I was letting my imagination carry me away. Could the whole mystery surrounding the professor’s death and the fire be explained by a simple break-in gone wrong? Had someone known about the cross, the vellum manuscripts, the medal-all worth who knew how many thousands or millions of dollars-and entered the house bent on theft? Could a violent struggle with a burglar explain the condition of the room the night the professor died-even the death itself, and the fire?
The theory was attractive. It explained things logically, in a real-world way, and it pushed thoughts of the supernatural and of sinister presences back into the land of superstition, where they belonged.
But it didn’t account for my dreams, which I knew were connected in some way to the Corbizzi house and the medal, although I hadn’t discovered how. It didn’t clarify the premonitions felt by both me and Raphaella. I trusted Raphaella’s insight more than I would a compass or an adding machine. And once more I reminded myself that my own experience had proved that presences and the supernatural were as real as the hardwood floor under my feet.
So I stood there in the alcove, leaning back on the table, and let my eye wander at random over some of the titles. The Pazzi Family of Renaissance Florence, Savonarola and Il Magnifico, The Renaissance Popes, The Siege of San Marco, Blood in the Cathedral: The Pazzi-Medici Feud, Savonarolan Theocracy-the last by none other than Eduardo Corbizzi.
The prof had been a scholar of Renaissance Italy, which I knew-after I looked it up-was the period from 1300 CE to 1600 CE. But that was all I knew, besides the fact that I couldn’t have found Florence on a map. I went to the reference shelves behind the escritoire and took down an atlas, looked up the city’s name in the index. Florence was in Tuscany, a region in central Italy, just like Marco had said.
My cell trilled. A city number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Garnet Havelock?”
“That’s me.”
“Hello, this is Marshall Northrop.”
My parents’ friend, the professor from the classical studies department at York University.
“Thanks for calling,” I said.
We traded pleasantries for a few minutes, then Northrop got down to business. “You needed some translations. Got a pen handy?”
I sat down at Raphaella’s work station by the window and pulled a writing tablet to hand.
“Ready,” I said.
“First, let’s talk about the book. The title, Compendium Revelationem, is easy. The English is ‘Collection of Revelations.’ ”
“Okay.”
“Hieronymvs is a given or what used to be called a Christian name,” he went on. “You may not have known that in Latin a v is an English u. The modern spelling would be Hieronymus, like the artist Hieronymus Bosch.”
“Ah, I see,” I said knowingly. I had no idea who the prof was referring to.
“In English the name would be Jerome.”
“Got it.”
“Ferrara is, of course, the Italian city.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Firenze is the Italian for Florence.”
“Right.”
“You have the date already-1495. The rest is a name-the printer and/or publisher of the book, Signore Francesco-that’s Francis, like the saint-Bonaccorsi. With me so far?”
“I’m with you,” I replied, scribbling.
“Now to the words imprinted around the circumference of the medal. As you said in your email, some of the words are indecipherable.”
I didn’t remember writing a six-syllable word in my letter. But I said, “Understood.”
“Remember that the v in Latin is a u in English. Also relevant is this: it was customary when putting Latin inscriptions on buildings, statues, medallions, and so on to compress words where space demanded. Sup is ‘super’ or ‘above,’ for example. Add this fact to the poor quality of the inscription and I have quite a challenge. All I can be sure about for the one side of the medal is ‘Hieronymus’ and ‘Doctissimus’-Most Learned Jerome-a formal title for an academic or churchman.
“On the reverse side of the medal we have better luck. I find ‘The sword of the Lord above the earth’ and ‘speedily and rapidly’ and ‘the spirit copiously advises.’ That might also be ‘amply warns.’ But here’s a loose translation: ‘Behold, bold and swift shall be the sword of the Lord upon the land.’ ”
“Got it,” I said, jotting furiously.
“Good. I’m not sure how helpful that is to you.”
“It’s very useful,” I said. “Thanks a lot. You’ve cleared up a few things. Um, if you have a minute or two more, there’s something I heard that I’m almost certain is Latin. I’m not sure how accurately I can repeat it.”
“Go ahead.”
I recited the words spoken by the torture victim in my dream.
And the professor laughed.
“I guess I didn’t say it very well,” I said, disappointed.
“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. What you said is taken from two very well-known works. Well, if you’re Catholic and know Latin, that is. The part beginning with Credo is from a statement of belief, the Nicene Creed. It goes, ‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’ And so on. Want me to repeat that?”
“I’m writing it down. Go on.”
“The second bit is a prayer. ‘Out of the depths I have cried to thee, oh Lord. Lord hear my voice.’ It’s from the Psalms and has been widely recited since medieval times.”
“Oh.”
“I believe it was Oscar Wilde who wrote a book while in prison. He titled it De Profundis, or ‘From the Depths.’ ”
“Prison, you said?”
“That’s right. They locked Oscar up for being gay. It was against the law in those days. What a world, eh? Anything else I can do for you?”
“No. This is great,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Any time, Garnet. My best to your parents.”
And he was gone.
With swelling excitement I opened my laptop and brought up the page of words I had copied from the medal and the professor’s old copy of Compendium Revelationem. My eyes darted back and forth between the computer screen and the scribbles I had made during the phone call.
The man in my dream was the man on the medal and his name was Hieronymus.
One of the names on the Compendium was Hieronymus. Northrop had said that Bonaccorsi was probably the publisher. So Hieronymus was probably the author.
I had the names of two cities in Italy, Ferrara and Firenze, or Florence. How they fit the puzzle was anybody’s guess.
I sat back and stretched. Puzzles. Conundrums. Riddles. Enigmas. Fun? Sometimes, but not this time. Frustrating? Definitely. Dangerous? I looked around. Maybe. Probably.
My gaze was drawn to the alcove. “Well, Professor Eduardo Corbizzi,” I said out loud, “maybe I should ask you.”
I crossed the room and took his Savonarolan Theocracy from the shelf and carried it to one of the comfy leather club chairs in front of the hearth and the new mantel. Wondering what “savonarolan” meant, I began to read. The first chapter took me to Renaissance Florence. After half an hour or so of dry academic paragraphs I sat back and stared at the ceiling, the book open on my lap.
It couldn’t be this easy, I thought.
Savonarola. A surname. First name, Girolamo. Born and educated in Ferrara. Lived and preached in Florence. A Dominican monk and a priest. A writer and renowned orator. One of his most famous books was Compendium Revelationem, in which he recounted visions of the future he claimed were revealed to him by God.
He was the subject of Professor Corbizzi’s book.
His name, Girolamo, meant Hieronymus in Latin and Jerome in English.
He was the face on the medal, the author of the “Collection of Revelations,” the subject of Professor Corbizzi’s book, and the tortured prisoner in my dream. And according to Professor Eduardo Corbizzi, he was a fanatic.